


Mixed Priorities

by Fox_the_Hermit



Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Role Reversal, a lot of pining and denial and obliviousness, possibly some dangerous science performed by minors, puppy Ichigo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 17:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20029834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox_the_Hermit/pseuds/Fox_the_Hermit
Summary: Shihouin Yoruichi is assigned to patrol Karakura town, as a mandatory condition for further promotion.It's supposed to be easy - just one or two months in the transient world, hunting Hollows, watching humans.And then, thanks to the human Urahara Kisuke, it all goes very, very sideways.[UraMayu Week Day One Prompt - Role Reversal]





	Mixed Priorities

**Author's Note:**

> Role Reversal prompt response (hopefully with some more chapters eventually to follow XD) for UraMayu week!

Kisuke blinks at the distant roar, and turns his head in its direction.

He’s been hearing hints of it all day, somewhere in the distance - and for all he can tell, it’s been getting  _ closer _ . Not that anyone else seems to hear it, too preoccupied with news of exploding streets and random accidents.

Well, there is little he can do to investigate when weighed down with bags of grocery shopping and his school backpack - and if it is some strange wild animal on the loose, he is not certain he  _ wants _ to feed three bags worth of food to it.

Ururu and Jinta are probably waiting for dinner, anyway, if they haven’t decided to get started on the leftovers without him. Although, they most likely have.

If the creature is still around after he finishes his homework, he can go look for it then. If he finds out what it is, Kurotsuchi might stop suggesting that he go to a psychiatrist for his ‘hallucinations’ about ghosts.

* * *

Where is it?

Yoruichi looks around, frowning, perched on one of the tall posts scattered around the human town.

The Hollow’s reiatsu signature has just vanished again - like it has been all day, popping up and vanishing before even her shunpo gets her to it, seemingly travelling around at random.

It’s certainly a very strong one, to evade the heir of the Shihouin.

Well, while finding it may be a challenge - how likely is it that it will pose a threat to her?

She might be more experienced in combat with fellow Shinigami and normal souls, but surely a mindless monster won’t be a challenge.

There it is again - close, this time.

Yoruichi shunpos along the empty street, following the howling - it should be merely a street or two away now, not far - and then it cuts out,  _ again _ .

Where-

The next shunpo step is interrupted by an abrupt and solid collision, and she falls, along with the obstacle.

She gets up, and stares at the human teenager picking himself up off the ground, gathering up packages of food into bags. 

“I apologise, I did not see you walking there,” the human says, straightening up and wincing. And then blinking at her, clearly surprised by- her outfit, perhaps? The clothes the humans wear are pretty different from hers.

Still. He can  _ see _ her? 

“Who are you?” she asks, staring at him. But no, there’s no chain of fate, and he doesn’t have the reiatsu presence of a shinigami in a gigai. Besides, she’s the only one posted here for patrol.

“Urahara Kisuke,” he answers, still looking her over, eyes lingering on her sword. Are weapons not common here? “Are you okay?”

“Of course. I am Shihouin Yoruichi, and am pleased to make your acquaintance.” If he can see spirits… “Have you seen any sort of monster around this area, Urahara-san?”

He tilts his head. “Monster? Do you mean the creature that has been raising that racket around the city all day? It’s still screaming over there.” He gestures vaguely to the left. 

The sound suddenly resumes - how could she not have heard it just now? - before dying off, the Hollow taking an unneeded breath.

She draws her sword, listening to where the Hollow is shrieking its head off. It would be easy to jump over the buildings, attack from behind, cut through the head and mask.

Standard protocol.

She takes a running start, then leaps, reiatsu drawn in tightly enough that the Hollow shouldn’t feel her coming. Not that she had been announcing her presence earlier, of course.

It’s not there. From her perch on the lamppost, she can’t see it - only some cracks in the streets and knocked over garbage bins, and the fading feeling of an open Garganta.

Too late,  _ again _ .

The human said he’d been hearing it all day - could it have been following him?

If so, well - he’s about the only lead she has, then.

Not bothering to sheathe the zanpakutou, she follows the human along several more streets, keeping an ear out for the Hollow - but there’s nothing. 

There’s a ripple in the air, further on, right as the human walks by. For a moment, it looks like a mere heat haze or something - and then it tears open into a yawning black garganta.

The human leaps forwards, clearly more alert than he’d been before, the long, lashing black appendage of the Hollow only just missing him, burying itself in the pavement.

It emerges out of the Garganta fully, and howls, getting ready to pursue the fleeing prey.

It’s not the biggest hollow she’s seen or heard of- but certainly looks more complex, more advanced. A humanoid, bipedal body, with six long, bendable appendages protruding from its back, and a long, barbed, prehensile tail.

Too distracted to see her coming means she should be able to just take it out with one strike.

The tail swats her out of the air and to the hard ground, moving faster than she is. 

She’s not moving as quickly as she can - but that’s still concerning.

And she’s clearly underestimating her opponent.

It’s not as slow and stupid as it should be.

Okay. Sword away, shunko out, until she has this thing worn down.

The Hollow turns to look at her, appendages raised, and then two of them are rushing to strike at her.

Condensing reiatsu around her arms, she blocks the bladed end of one appendage with her forearm, grabs it, digs her feet into ground that cracks from the force exerted on it, and grabs the second appendage. 

She pulls them back, until the Hollow is straining against her, and yanks them up.

Despite its best attempts to stay standing, the Hollow is yanked upwards into the air, sent flying by the tendrils she’s still holding.

Now all she has to do it crash it back into the ground, stun it, and then give it a dozen punches to crack that armour plating she can see around its head.

But the Hollow doesn’t fall when she yanks the two tendrils down - instead, the other four tendrils elongate until they reach the ground, the sharp ends digging in, holding the main body suspended off the ground.

Yoruichi yanks the tendrils again, harder - and they rip out of the Hollow’s body.

To be almost immediately replaced by two new ones, raised in preparation to strike.

So it not only does it have speed and control - it can regenerate. Fantastic. 

_ Fantastic _ .

She can take out the legs and they’ll just keep coming back without letting the thing fall.

Unless-

“Hado Number 31! Shakkahou!”

She follows right behind the blast, slamming into the limb the spell just misses.

It’s weaker than it would be with the incantation, but it blasts through one of the other legs - the one she was aiming at, and burns another.

With three damaged legs, the Hollow is temporarily off-balance, the two tendrils flailing - giving her the opening.

She leaps up, using the leg as a foothold, and lands on top of the Hollow with as much force as she can.

Something cracks in the Hollow underneath her - and also in her leg.

Right.

_ Raiouken. _

The armoured back of the Hollow starts splintering in the barrage of punches, the squirming mass from which the appendages emerged now pulverised - and with the extra limbs now gone, they’re both falling through the air.

The Hollow will have to choose whether to try and shake her off or land safely on all four legs, and-

There’s a sharp, piercing pain in her stomach, and then she’s yanked off the Hollow’s back by the barbed tail stuck inside her.

It throws her to the pavement, and she barely has time to cast another Shakkahou to blast it to the other end of the street before it lands on her and finishes her off.

Right-

Right.

She needs to use kaido, to stop the external bleeding, at least, until the Hollow is dead. It doesn’t seem to have touched her spine - good - but the internal bleeding isn’t leaving her much time, and the size of the injury-

Her hands glow green as she presses them to the entry side of the injury.

“Shihouin-san!”

Why the  _ hell  _ is the human still around? She saw him run off - but he’s back, without the bags, something bulging in his pockets.

There’s something being pressed to her back to staunch the bleeding there, even as she’s sealing it up, and then the human tries to pick her up.

What on earth does he think he’s doing?

“Leave me alone,” Yoruichi rasps. They probably only have seconds before the Hollow regenerates enough to attack again. “It’s hunting you -  _ run.  _ I’ll deal with it. _ ” _

“Pardon me, but I do think your internal organs were trying to fall out moments ago.”

“Then run anyway,” she pauses to hiss in pain, “-because there’s no point in both of us being eaten.”

The ridiculous human isn’t listening, wrapping one of his outer garments tightly around her middle, working around her glowing hands to help stop the bleeding.  _ Moron _ .

“Can’t I fight it? I could- would setting it on fire help?”

How would a human set a Hollow on fire without kido?

“It’s a  _ Hollow, _ fire wouldn’t kill it - only a zanpakuto like my sword could purify it. You have to be a shinigami to have one, to  _ use _ one.”

Oh.  _ Oh. _

If the Hollow managed to track this one human across the city - well, that must mean he might have something about him, a much stronger reiatsu that made him the target. 

Maybe strong enough that, those reserves, and her own power combined...

“I can give you my powers - if you let me stab you with my zanpakuto.”

There’s only the slightest moment of hesitation before the answer. 

“Fine.”

He sets her down - and she’s barely standing on her own feet, with the wounds now-sealed.

Hopefully, what she’s heard was right. This shouldn’t kill him, or anything.

She unsheathes the wakizashi, and runs it through the human before he can reconsider, concentrating on all her reiryoku - and shoving it into the human.

There’s a blinding explosion of gold and red light, reiatsu, shoving her to the floor, but leaving the human standing - and now clothed in an exact replica of her uniform, sleeveless and near backless and all.

But the sword in his hand isn’t a replica of hers - it’s a massively oversized butcher knife almost as long as the human is tall.

The Hollow shrieks, and Yoruichi is left to watch as it starts running at them on all fours, gaining speed, bladed appendages held at the ready.

The human runs at it, apparently going for a full frontal assault.

But at the last second, he changes course - with a burst of something that almost looks like shunpo, or shunko, he dodges and jumps at the side of a house, pushing off the wall, and landing on it’s back, bringing down the oversized joke of a sword on the Hollow’s head from the back, cleaving it in half - and following the moment to cleave the  _ rest of the body in half _ , succeeding despite the armour and the difference in reiatsu strength there must be.

Or perhaps because of it, if the difference is,  _ somehow _ , actually in the  _ human’s favour _ . She just, somehow, can’t feel it’s presence, like it’s so diffused into the environment-

That it’s dampening all reiatsu signatures in a large radius, hiding both her, the human’s precise location, and any Hollows within it.

The Hollow turns to ash, and the human drops gracefully to the pavement, the shinigami uniform and sword fading away in a mist of red reiatsu.

There's something watching them - Yoruichi can feel it. She frowns, staring at the street, and- there.

A dog.

It's orange and white, and very fluffy, its features almost fox-like - a shiba inu, she thinks. It's watching them in an odd, attentive way - almost  _ intelligently _ , like a cat would.

But it can’t be anything more than a stray dog.

“Shihouin-san, are you okay? Is there like… a shinigami hospital or something around here?” the human asks - or, well, Urahara. She has a feeling she’ll be dealing with him a lot during this posting.

“There is no shinigami hospital, no- but there is someone around. While I can heal most of the damage myself, it would be helpful to get in contact with that person.”

“Okay, ah- good, then. I am happy to help.”  
  


* * *

Mayuri feels it the  _ moment _ the change happens, waking up and sending the pile of textbooks under him crashing to the floor.

The vague cloud of reiatsu, the one that spills out from that blond menace and trails over everything around him like an oil spill, changing from human to  _ shinigami. _

He’s only ever watched shinigami from afar, never interacted - but it’s  _ impossible _ to mistake that taint colouring that moron’s reiatsu, just as it’s always been impossible to not feel its vaguely hollow presence.

Well- he can’t have become a shinigami, not truly, so his honour as the Last Quincy doesn’t demand that he destroy him. But he’ll have to keep a close eye on whichever moronic shinigami decided to give that  _ pest _ their powers.

And that Kisuke doesn’t get eaten by a Hollow with barely two braincells to rub together, because otherwise their rivalry would be embarrassing.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Here's a link to the [UraMayu Week tumblr](https://uramayuevents.tumblr.com), and here's a link to the [UraMayu discord server](https://discordapp.com/invite/UHWVxg5)!


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